The thing that makes me hesistant about engaging in this conversation can be seen in various Twitter feeds and comment threads (you know where to look). After more than four years of fighting this fight, since I started blogging at 99 Seats, well...I'm pretty tired of it. It always seems to go the same way: there's an inciting incident, there are complaints, some outrage, some Serious Questions asked by Serious People, there is pushback, there's follow-up, then it all dies down. All of the sme sides are taken by all the same people with little variation every time. And ultimately nothing changes. The bright spots happen, the work is done, they're noted, they're admired and then the bright spots are ignored, by both "sides." The bright spots keep churning until they burn out and then new bright spots, isolated, solitary, flare up. Lather, rinse, repeat.

One of the thing that's frustrating is that, superficially, we're all in agreement. The American theatre has an audience problem. The numbers are dwindling, even if the box office isn't. The cultural impact has lessened. The question that we really have to face is this: what is to be done? I came across this dialogue yesterday. It's a back-and-forth between a progressive and a conservative about income inequality. As intellectuals, the conversation hovers around the same question: what is to be done about income inequality. Both sides see that it's a problem and it's a problem with multiple solutions. How do you pick one? What do you advocate for?

I feel like there's something similar in theatre right now, but also something markedly different. I think we can all agree on the problem: an aging, increasingly homogeneous audience base that is resistant to change. How do we serve that audience base and still attract new audiences. When it comes to that part of the conversation, though, I feel like it breaks down. On one side, I think there is a vocal, engaged, committed community, advocating for increased diversity in the work and in the staffs of theatre, a greater sense of community engagement and communal obligation. On the other...well, it's harder to say, since, superficially, the "other side" gives a lot of lip service to all of those things, while resisting any actual effort to make them happen and responding with sarcasm, condescencion, suspicion and outright mockery to those who advocate for change. Joe Dowling's response to the Guthrie flap perfectly embodies that: people agitating for change are from small theatres (i.e., bitter and marginal), self-serving (i.e. careerist climbers), engaged in social media (i.e. flighty, unserious youths tapping away on smartphones). So while saying that women and people of color have a place in his theatre, he offers the smallest possible spots and seems upset that we're not all grateful. This attitude is pretty constant among artistic directors and theatre "leaders."

On the outside, there are voices that crop up on Twitter and various blogs, making the same accusations, but with more vitriol, more nastiness. But never going at the actual question: what is to be done? While I find the conservative position on income inequality to be unpersuasive, it's at least a stance. The conversative forces in the American theatre rarely seem to advocate a stance, at least anything more than a combination of "Who cares what you think?" and "STFU. You'll get nothing and be happy." If we were going to have a real Grand Debate on diversity in the theatre, I can think of a dozen people, off the top of my head to take the "pro"-diversity side. On the other? Who would really stand up and be counted? They would rather simply say, "Well, the A.D. selected the best plays possible. If they happened to be 80% by white males...well, then, you do the math."

The question of race and diversity has been a loud undercurrent in the American conversation for the last few months. Between the dog whistle (and sometimes outright whistle) racism of the GOP primaries, the Trayvon Martin shooting, the recent flap about HBO's Girls, there's been a lot of talk about how race functions in America at this juncture. As I've read piece after piece, followed discussion after discussion, something has become really apparent to me. Ta-Nahesi Coates nailed it perfectly well here:

The conservative movement doesn't understand anti-racism as a value, only as a rhetorical pose. This is how you end up tarring the oldest integrationist group in the country (the NAACP) as racist. The slur has no real moral content to them. It's all a game of who can embarrass who. If you don't think racism is an actual force in the country, then you can only understand it's invocation as a tactic.

This is larger than the movement conservatives in the political realm. There is a wide swath of this country that looks on discussions of diversity as a tactic to an end, not an actual concern for actual people, but just another kind of rhetorical dodge, a way to make a "name" for yourself or grind some personal ax. Diversity is an academic pursuit as far as they're concerned. The idea that it is a legitimate desire for justice, for fairness, born out of a deep need, that concept is alien to them. And so they go after everyone else's personal life, or career standing, or whatever else they think this push is emanating from.

I'm surprised at how well this works, how quickly the conversation becomes derailed into each perons' personal issue or background. I guess we wouldn't still be having the same conversation if the dodges and undercutting didn't work. But we do. Every few months, we go around the same maypole, holding onto the same strings, running faster and faster in a circle and getting nowhere.

I don't mean to be bitter or cynical, but I'm largely over it. Change is coming, it must come, it always comes. But it won't come from words. Just actions. This conversation may spur some change, spur some action, and that's its use. That's good enough. For me, though, I'll keep focusing on what is to be done. And try to do that.

"Inevitably, people will have a point of view. You can take a snapshot of any organization at any particular period and draw conclusions from it."

"The Guthrie is not an organization that lacks diversity. We have diversity in every area. This particular thing was related to women. Well, most of the departments at the Guthrie, including some of our senior managment and, of course, we will have women in the season both as directors, as writers and, of course, on our stage."

April 13, 2012

I don't really "know" Mac Rogers (I think we've met a couple of times, traded a few emails and such, do the FB/Twitter thing on occasion), but apparently, he knows me. Like really well. Because this is my life.

So well over half of my writing time goes to procrastinating. Another half a month goes to false starts and blind alleys, where I spend an obscene amount of time avoiding the obvious conclusion, which is that I’m going to half to dump the last fifteen pages and start the whole section over again. So on a good process – on a GOOD writing process, for me – I actually fruitfully write one-fourth of the time I spend attempting to write. And with the Honeycomb Trilogy the enormity of it made it hard to focus on one scene at a time. I had a hard time putting out of my head the overall object being attempted. It scared the crap out of me, and when something scares the crap out of me, I force myself to think about it ALL THE TIME.

I'm a bit pressed for time today, so I can't give the kind of full-throated, passionate, articulate, powerful statement about my work that Mac does wonderfully here. So just, you know, go and read this damn thing. Read the holy heck out of it. And next time you think about bitching out a writer for not writing the play you wanted them to write, well, you think about this. And have a little pity, mercy and love in your heart for all us sinners.

April 06, 2012

I don't think it's possible for me to agree with this more. Seriously. The culture that encourages and celebrates misery, pain and generally awful behavior in artists is one of the more damaging things in the arts, especially right now. It not only drives young artists to distraction and sometimes terrible life choices, it shortens the life span of artists (both the artistic life span and the actual life span), it furthers the idea that work celebrating pain and suffering is "real" and "true." It also contributes to the pressure of not "selling out," i.e. taking a job that provides support and some measure of comfort. That pressure helps keep the arts a place for the wealthy who can afford to indulge in a "poverty" life style without the, you know, poverty.

Really, folks: let it go. An artist can be a happy, healthy, whole individual. It's okay.

March 23, 2012

This morning I read this at the Onion A.V. Club, and then I read this at Flavorwire. Both pieces look at work that was terribly reviewed in its time, but has since gone on to not only long life, but great importance and critical acclaim. It started me thinking: why doesn't this seem to happen in theatre?

I'd thought about it a few weeks back, when I caught the Signature's production of The Lady From Dubuque by Edward Albee. As is well known, the play was a massive flop in 1980, part of Albee's "lost" period of failure and alcoholism. The new production has faired far, far better. Personally, I enjoyed it greatly as a play and a production, and it felt like something that would be perfectly at home on Broadway (and still might make it back there).

But I can't really think of any other work that received terrible reviews in its first run and has gone on to become a major work. Can you? It often seems like the original critical response is either treated as gospel or gets lost down the memory hole entirely. And I'm not talking about plays that received bad reviews and have gone on to commercial success. Look at the movies on the Flavorwire list: there are bona fide film classics on there. Same goes for Devo (and there's always that rumor about Rolling Stone's first review of Nirvana's Nevermind). These are considered cultural touchstones now.

Why doesn't this happen in theatre? A bad play is considered a bad play, seemingly forever. Do we simply allow our critics more power? Does the rare chance of a remount of a failure feed into it? Or are our critics somehow better, able to critique a work in its bones? Or are the bad reviews disappeared by future success? I heard this story once: when Albee had his play The Zoo Story read at the Actors Studio for the first time, the initial audience response was pretty negative. (If you know the Actors Studio, that's not necessarily surprising.) After a few minutes of people giving pointed criticism to Albee, Norman Mailer, who'd championed the play, spoke up. He said, "I think this is the best one-act play I've ever heard." At that point, the tenor in the room changed and everyone fell over themselves to praise the play. Sometimes I wonder if this dynamic works on a larger scale in theatre. When one person, deemed important enough by the community, makes a pronouncement, it has the weight of fact. And we all hop in line (with a few contrarians taking the opposite position just because). And once it's a fact, that's it: this play is good. This play is bad. There's no argument, no rediscovery.

Or maybe I'm wrong and missing a whole chunk of theatre history. What say you all?

March 16, 2012

I find copyright/copyleft issues kinda endlessly fascinating, so I was pretty psyched to read to Isaac's HowlRound piece on it. You should definitely check it out; it's a great, comprehensive overview of the issues, a great starting place to kick off the important part: what does this have to do with theatre?

At first glance, there isn't a lot of overlap, in strict terms of production and development. The copyright to plays are held by playwrights, rarely, if ever, by theatres or corporations. Plays are generated by original ideas (or sometimes adaptations). Our copyright issues, in terms of generation, are pretty cut and dried. There are, though, special cases where we bump up against the thorn bush that is modern copyright. Isaac mentions one, Elevator Repair Service's production of Gatz, using The Great Gatsby as its text. Another, from a few years back, was the play Dog Sees God, which uses thinly veiled Peanuts characters. "Thinly veiled," of course, to fend off copyright infringement claims from UPI and the estate of Charles Schulz.

Some theatre practitioners, such as Chuck Mee, Caryl Churchill and Mike Daisey, have touched on open access for their work (though Mee is different from the others; I'll talk more about him in a second) and made their work available via the web and encouraged not just unlicensed performances (Suzan-Lori Parks has done that as well), but for revision and alteration. Because, of course, one way that copyright does affect theatre is in terms of licensing. This is often tightly controlled to maximize profit, just as it works in the world of corporate entertainment. Loosening this understanding would have an obvious benefit to theatre as a practice, allowing productions to happen wherever. Obviously, though, that benefit comes at a distinct drawback for playwrights, since someone else would be getting rich off of our work while we got nothing (how exactly this is different from a fair amount of theatre, in practice, is another matter for another day).

When I think about copyright issues, though, I think we're talking about two, different, but parallel issues, one concrete, the other philosophical. There are laws and precedents and legal ramifications of the conversation and of advocating a move towards greater open access to works of art. But underneath, I see a conversation about the nature of creation and collaboration. In my view, theatre is always a collaborative process. But we exist in a culture that generally recognizes only one creator. I've been fairly busy of late, rehearsing a lot, usually under the gun. My actors, hard-working, unpaid, awesome souls that they all are, ask me often about how I feel about paraphrasing. I've been using the same line, "Say what I wrote. Unless you say something funnier. In that case, say that. And I'll take credit for it." Which is true. I will. And we say that's okay. If an actor mis-speaks or mis-remembers a line and makes it better, I'm going to rewrite my play to use that. Why the hell not? But then I become the sole owner of that line. Or if there's a great bit of physical comedy and I put that in the stage directions. This is how we work. I always get frustrated when I hear actors talk about not being "generative" artists, because they are. They just don't get credit for being such. I think copyright/left issues can be a door to that discussion, to digging into how we think about creation.

They can also open up our minds in other ways. I've long admired Chuck Mee's (re) making project. Chuck has posted full texts of most, if not all, of his work online, with the following directive:

Please feel free to take the plays from this website and use them freely as a resource for your own work: that is to say, don't just make some cuts or rewrite a few passages or re-arrange them or put in a few texts that you like better, but pillage the plays as I have pillaged the structures and contents of the plays of Euripides and Brecht and stuff out of Soap Opera Digest and the evening news and the internet, and build your own, entirely new, piece--and then, please, put your own name to the work that results.

This is how current copyright laws and current creative thinking cuts off a whole layer of innovation from playwrights. Imagine if all the works of Beckett or O'Neill or Williams were similarly available to work from, to mix-and-match, to mash-up, to shake up. It takes nothing away from the original, but it allows for the possibility to truly discover something new. Remix culture is more than about coasting on someone else's creation, but working, in dialogue, both with the audience and with the original work to say something, to create a wholly new piece of art. Without that option, I do think art will stagnant. One of the oldest saws of writing is that there are only seven stories in the world. Having to start from scratch each time, you're going to wear 'em out.

As we look to the future, to the next waves of playwriting and theatremaking, to finding new audiences and conversations, it does us well to explore all of the options. Particularly the options that were a part of theatre for centuries.

March 05, 2012

Chuck D famously said that rap is CNN for black people. I do not consider this hyperbole. I'm not a huge rap fan, but one thing that I find constantly interesting about most rap is how much information is packed into the rhyme, the long list of, yes, brand names and status symbols, but also metaphors, descriptions, stories of life, heartbreak, struggle and success. It's often simple and straightforward, plainly stated. At the top of "Welcome to the Jungle," a track from the Jay-Z/Kanye West collaboration Watch The Throne, Kanye raps:

I asked her where she wanna be when she 25.

She turned around and looked at me and said, "Alive."

Boom. Kanye is a millionaire, a major celebrity. You have to imagine his encounters with the truly desperate are rarer and rarer these days. I don't think he's describing a recent experience. There is a strand in rap music about being down, no matter how much money you make or success you have. I don't think Jay-Z can get through an entire song without reminding us that he used to sell crack, over a decade, and several platinum albums, ago. But there's more to this than just boasting about thug life. There's witnessing happening.

Black people need a CNN because CNN so rarely tells our stories. A few weeks back, there were ads going around for a new show, hosted by S. Epatha Merkerson, focusing on missing black children, "our" children, as Epatha entoned in the ads. That's the story, though, isn't it? Black stories don't get told by the news media, or even most of the mainstream media. So somebody's got to represent.

In New York, Katori Hall's Hurt Village is that representation. In a little more than 2 hours, it does more than a month of those serious "Life In Black America" specials that pop up on CNN maybe once every couple of years. Set in the final days of the Hurt Village housing project in Memphis, Katori lays it all out: the pain of desperate poverty, the effect of the Iraq/Afghanistan wars, the war on drugs, the war over drugs, gentrification, gender inequality. You name it, it raises its head. But this isn't a documentary or a harangue. It's a pretty well-built, passionate, funny, sometimes shocking, ultimately heartbreaking play. A living, breathing, rampaging beast of the stage.

It's the kind of play that features Yo Mamma jokes, R. Kelly jokes, lyrical descriptions of crack trips, stunning monologues and soap opera intrigue, all nearly at the same time. It contains multitudes. It also captures a slice of American life, particularly African-American life that, as far as I can see, we don't really see on stage, not all the much. We see it on screens, large and small, but the modern black life of theatre is largely absent. We get periodic updates, from Katori or Tarell McCraney, but that's it. It was encouraging to see it, to see a very mixed audience witness this.

As StageGrade noted, the critical reaction to this play has been...well...difficult to pin down. I read through the reviews after I saw the show and I can't put my finger on exactly what happened. But they clearly didn't see the show I saw. Some of the criticisms are completely legit: the actors talk furiously fast and loose and in a southern accent/patois that is sometimes hard to decipher. To Katori's credit, there's no glossary or anything in the program. She just expects you to catch up. That's a good thing. But it seems to left some critics out in the cold. Even the critics who liked it seem to struggle with the play, comparing it to plays that it bears only the most superficial resemblance to...or rather, comparing Katori to playwrights that she bears a superficial resemblance to. I was glad to see that one critic mentioned The Lower Depths, which seems more apt. Another play leapt to my mind: The Cherry Orchard. Katori is giving us a snapshot of a world that's about to change, and probably not for the better, at least for the characters we see. In the face of looming, inevitable change and loss, they struggle to carry on. It's a pretty basic human story. And still powerful.

January 15, 2012

As I've written about here and, well, everywhere, one of the problems that our field faces is that we're deeply segregated. The work done by artists of color and the communities that support them are largely invisible to the white theatre community. The most common response I get when I bring this up is that you didn't know about the work, you weren't invited, you didn't think it would have anything to do with you.

Well. You're invited. Tomorrow night, the 2012 edition of The Fire This Time Festival kicks off. You're invited. There's a panel on casting (which, in the wake of the Motherfucker with the Hat dust-up should be interesting), a ten-minute play festival, and readings of six new plays by accomplished, talented, intriguing writers you probably haven't heard of. But you should.

Theatre can't exist by cutting off its nose to spite its face. We need each other, need to connect our audiences and our work. Making other artists, administrators, audiences, theatre makers and lovers the "other," it isn't going to make theatre stronger. We add by adding, not dividing. So consider yourself added.

16. To make an artistic home for others, you have to make a place of love for the art in others.

(Not that I don't love snacks.)

We talk a lot about the field, about the work, about quality, and sometimes about the lack of "great" plays. We talk about the Edifice Complex, rant about money spent on administrators not artists, about enhancement money, about money, money, money and how it gets spent. But we don't talk a lot about how one builds a home for artists. Or why. It's easy to say why in abstract, but in specific, what do you get?

So let me tell you a story about what happens when a theatre makes real room for artists, real room for the love of the art in others.

I haven't talked a lot about Rob Askins' play Hand to God because, well, it felt weird. Rob is a friend and the theatre that produced it is my own artistic home; I'm deeply involved. I knew going into it that it would hard to be objective about it so I wasn't going to try. But in the conversation about how building a home can build better plays, there's a lot to talk about.

Hand to God is Rob's second produced full-length play. And it's a pretty great play. But don't just take my word for it. At the end of February, it'll be returning for another engagement after a successful extension of a successful run and there's talk of more. It's pretty much an unqualified hit, loved by audiences, well-received by critics, everything a theatre could want. It's also just plain good, smart, funny and engaging. How do you get there? By making a home for artists.

Rob is an alum of Youngblood (as am I) and, as I mentioned above, they produced another play of his a couple of seasons ago: Princes of Waco. It was a good production, to be sure, but it certainly didn't receive what you could think was a rousing welcome. Some nice notices, talk of Rob's promise, but that was about it. (Rob, if you're reading this...sorry if I'm dredging up bad memories.)

In most cases like that, the theatre would simply move on. Thank Rob for a nice production and say, "See you when you have something else." Maybe do a reading of his next play or something, but mostly get back to looking for the next thing, the next writer and move on down the line. It's understandable: there's only so much money, only so much time, only so much energy to be given to any one artist. There are only so many production opportunities and theatres need to figure out how to optimize those. I'm not faulting anyone for operating this way. It makes sense, really. But what happens if you don't?

Rob became an artist member of E.S.T. (as am I) and started work on his next play. He worked with some of the same actors he'd worked with in the past (E.S.T. also produced a short play of his). He wrote work specifically for them, and worked with them on it over the course of more than a year. E.S.T. doesn't have a lot in the way of resources these days, still re-structuring after the double-whammies of the loss of its founding Artistic Director and the economic downturn, but they invested in Rob with what they had: time and space. Rob got time to work on his play, to work with his actors and director and deepen his play. The theatre didn't invest in the play, just in hopes of getting it ready, but they invested in Rob and made space for him to work.

And what did they get? A great play. The process of getting there matters. Really great plays take time, they take support, but what they really need is a home. The same goes for great artists. Homes are what we need. Todd does a good job of showing us how it's done. Swing by E.S.T. in a few weeks to see what it gets you.

January 08, 2012

I was browsing through the internet and hit upon some stats on gay marriage. Iowa legalized same-sex marriage in 2009. One year later, 815 Iowa couples married there, out of 17,884 heterosexual marriages, rougly 4% (there were a number of out-of-state marriages). In other states, the stats aren't as rich, but they paint a similar picture. The rate of gay marriage lags the rate of straight marriage by a pretty wide margin.

After decades of fighting for equal marriage rights, a small burst after local legalization is rarely sustained and soon drops to very low levels. I think, given that, it's safe to assume that marriage is primarily of interest to heterosexual couples. Gay people seem not to be interested in committed, faithful, monogamous relationships. And given that, you have to ask: should we continue to support those efforts? Years of investment hasn't provided a significant impact, so we have to question it. It may be difficult to admit, but given the long history of marriage among heterosexual people and the lack of a corresponding tradition in the homosexual community, I don't think we can avoid asking the hard question: do gay people want monogamy?

*******

Now, obviously I DO NOT AGREE with any of the above statements. Not in the slightest. But this is the argument that Tom Loughlin is making. There are various folks popping up in the comments and other places saying that it's wrong to call his post racist or bigoted, that by calling it that we're stifling debate and conversation and that, while he's using faulty stats, the underlying questions are legitimate. Art Hennessey at The Mirror Up To Nature has posted a bunch of stats from the 2008 NEA Arts Participation Survey. The usual types, offering support for Tom, have chimed in, implying that these stats support Tom's post. They also say that by pointing out issues with Tom's use of stats and reasoning, Isaac and I (though he's only posted one brief post about this) are stifling debate and leading a witch hunt. I have some things to say about all of that.

First, it's really important to note there are two different aligned conversations here. No one is disputing that that there are low levels of participation in "mainstream" theatre by people of color, both as audience and as artists. They are often lower than population representation. Tom uses a very incomplete set of stats, Art offers a larger set, but none of this is news. For some, like myself, it's a matter of concern. For others, not so much. If it's not a matter of concern for you, more power to you. I don't care about your reasons why or why not. If you want to tell me that it's not a matter of concern for you and give me some reasons, I'll happily engage you. But I don't have to "disprove" your point, when you're talking about how someone enjoys something or whether a group of people "likes" something or not. We can talk about behavior and context, but not about intention. How do you disprove that an entire group of people likes an entire art form? How do you prove that?

Secondly, though, what I and other find offensive about Tom's post is that he doesn't just say that he doesn't care, he says that, based on the incomplete stats, it's easy to assume that black people aren't interested in theatre. In his post, he implies, pretty heavily, that he already thought this, but felt guilty and uncomfortable about saying it. If Tom already thought that black people just don't like theatre and then found stats that appear to confirm that, that's a real problem. My problem with that is separate from the discussion about participation rates.

Stats are simply numbers. Interpretation is what matters. In Tom's interpretation, the stats mean that black people don't like narrative theatre. That's the only reason he presents. On its face, it's making assumptions about an entire racial/ethnic group on the basis of a small sample. He's not pointing to a poll of black people saying they don't want to go to theatre. He's interpreting the activity of a group based on his belief about their intentions. It's a best bigoted. But especially since he's a white theatremaker and essentially encouraging other white theatremakers to abandon efforts to diversify their stages and audiences, it becomes racist. Do I think Tom is a racist? Honestly? I don't know him that well. We've tussled over similar issues before. That post espouses a racist position. That's how Tom chooses to intrepret the stats.

If you reject the premise I outline above, look at Tom's post again and think about your own prejudices and assumptions. If context matters, if the history of homophobia and oppression matters, if other larger societal factors come into play on gay marriage, why not on black participation in theatre? Why is it primarily due to a lack of interest? Why would a lack of interest even enter into it?

If you find one offensive, or poorly argued, or ignoring obvious facts and clear realities, and the other one reasonable, think about why. That's really all I ask.

January 07, 2012

All right. L'Affaire Loughlin, as Isaac has so aptly dubbed it, continues apace, with the comment thread approaching 60 comments. Some are thoughtful, some are angry, some are prideful, some are downright obnoxious. Needless to say, there does seem to be fair amount to discuss here. My own anger and frustration has largely subsided and I'm seeing things a bit cooler. I feel like, okay, if we want to engage in an actual discussion here, about actual things, let's do so. Can we? I hope we can.

Eighty-three percent of all tickets were purchased by Caucasian theatregoers.

That's all we're ALL going on. There's little to no context to that, no indications of which shows were attended by whom (a season that included two plays by a writer of color, but several shows - The Motherfucker With The Hat, A Free Man of Color, The Scottsboro Boys and Sister Act - with people of color in significant, leading roles). All we know is that 83% of the Broadway tickets were purchased by Caucasian buyers.

Well, we do know a couple of other things, though. 62% were purchased by tourists, NOT NYC natives (though with no information about where they were from), 65% were female, 78% held at least a college degree. These give us a better picture of the Broadway audience. If we're going to say that theatre is meant for the main Broadway audience, that leaves men and the non-college-educated out of it, too. But, because Tom sets aside any of that context, let's set it aside as well. And let's focus on the single assumption that Tom draws from the one statistic:

Given all the demographics we know about theatre in the US and westernized countries today, I think it’s safe to make the following conclusion: Theatre is primarily for white people, as both audience members and practitioners.

He then provides a little more context and offers a definition for "theatre:"

But then the question came to me – is it so bad to admit that theatre is for white people? White western culture has, for better or worse, risen to a dominant position in this multicultural, heterogeneous society that has evolved in this country, and because of that fact alone it is subject to criticism and the push of upward mobility from cultural forces below (at times rightfully so). But perhaps it’s just worth the few seconds it takes to stop and consider the idea that white people, like any other culture or race, deserve to have a culture and forms of art that they enjoy and that is reflective of their values and history. Theatre, as it has evolved from the Greeks, seems to be one of those cultural art forms that people of white European descent have enjoyed for a long time (and the majority of them enjoyed it until the advent of mass media). And that, in and of itself, is OK. Isn’t it?

This is not to say that other races or ethnic groups do not have theatre or do not enjoy it. But the particular form of the scripted written work as interpreted by actors in a linear story-telling fashion seems to be one that has interested western Caucasians for a long time, and apparently continues to do so for a certain demographic slice of white people as a whole.

Emphasis added. And, once he's given this context to this assumption, he asks these questions:

The thing about having a passion for something like theatre is that you really, really want to share that passion. It is difficult to accept that statistically many people out there simply don’t share your passion for or interest in theatre. They have other things they enjoy doing more. When we talk about audience development, isn’t that what we are trying to do? Get people who are fundamentally uninterested in our passion to share it with us? Statistically that doesn’t seem to be working so well, particularly among the young. Perhaps the time has come to say that theatre is what it is – an art form for older, well-off, educated white people. Nobody else is truly interested in it at the moment, because the numbers do not indicate any support for the art form beyond this small slice of the American demographic profile.

(Again, emphasis added)

So. It largely boils down to, "Since theatre is only enjoyed by older, educated white people, why do we bother trying to get other people interested?" Which is a question we can discuss, in some ways. But we can't discuss it without dealing with some contexts, history, and clarifying some terms.

What most of the reaction has been focused around is the statement that "Theatre is primarily for white people." Even if you want to say that "scripted, written work interpreted by actors in a linear story" is a defnition of "theatre" or even accurately represents what appears on Broadway, the only theatre truly under discussion here, can anyone really make the argument that this holds true? Even if you want to say that Noh theatre or Bunraku puppetry aren't what Tom is talking about, how, besides origin, do they not fit?

In the comments, it's brought a couple of times why we can't call theatre a "white" art form, when rap and hip-hop are "black" art forms. I think that's an imprecise comparison at best, given the history of both most Broadway entertainments and most rap. Actually, I'd say given anything in this country. The main entertainment on Broadway is the musical and that owes quite a lot to both white and black artists and audiences over its history, not to mention Jewish artists and Latino artists and Asian artists. The same can be said for rap. I, for one, have never and do not think of rap or hip-hop as a "black" art form, only created and enjoyed by black people. Its history owes too much to artists of all colors and anyone who knows a single thing about hip-hop would agree. It's equally reductive and incorrect to say the same thing about Broadway.

You can argue that "dialogue" theatre comes out of a European tradition and that's not far off. But, like many things that came from a European tradition, when it hit our shores and our patchwork country, it was filtered through a thousand lenses and experiences and came out different. I simply don't see how, in good conscience, you can say that, as an art form, theatre is only for white people. History and reality would completely refute that. That is why I get angry about this. Because if you take a second and actually think, and not just act on your own biases and prejudices, this would be apparent. It should have been apparent to Tom.

You can have any opinion you want, obviously. If you're of the opinion that theatre is for white people, go right ahead and have that opinion. I won't stop you. No one can. You can write all you want, think it, say it to your friends. It's your opinion. If you want to have that opinion and say that's born out by facts in evidence, and it's not, you can't expect people not to note that. And if you want to have that opinion and not have people say that it's racist, well, that's another matter. It is. It's not stifling conversation to call a spade a spade.

Anyway. To the actual question at hand, which is, why is Broadway so white? Tom does throw a bit of a sucker punch in the mix, in his attempt to prove that the lack of attendance for Broadway has a racial origin, and talks about the "lack" of black theatres, based on two lists he could find. So why is Broadway so white and why are there so few African-American theatres. (I will stop for one second to note that, apparently, other minorities don't rate or count here; theatre is FOR white people, therefore it's NOT for black people, but other minorities...who knows? Tom doesn't seem to care.)

Again, context matters. And the work matters. As I noted above, the 2010-2011 Broadway season, the season under discussion, featured two writers of color, neither of them African-American. It featured two high profile productions of plays that centered around African-Americans, both created by white artists and both carrying some controversy (A Free Man of Color and The Scottsboro Boys) and one play with a prominent role played by a well-known African-American actor (The Motherfucker With The Hat). If I were an African-American ticket buyer (let's just imagine that I am), and I wanted to see something that reflected my life, would I look to Broadway?

Also, let's deal a bit with expectations. In 2010, white Americans represented 63% of the population. African-Americans represented 12%. Should our expectation for what is largely considered a "national" theatre be that far off from the expectations of the populace? We can't really use the NYC stats, because the majority of the Broadway audience is not from NY. What should the goal be? Absolute parity? To be honest, I'm not sure what the answer is there. I'm in the camp that wants greater participation of minorities in the arts, but I'm also trying to be realistic about the ultimate results. What results would convince Tom that minorities are interested in theatre? What did he expect?

In this kind of discussion, it's very easy to rely on anecdote and "observation." "I was here and I saw this." "I run a theatre and I saw this." Without context, without knowing the work and the communities, we start talking past each other pretty quickly. The old saw is true: anecdote is not the same as data. But data also means nothing without context.

As to the "lack" of African-American theatres, there are a number of factors leading to that reality. Oregon Shakespeare's Claudia Alick raises many of them in her comment here. A smaller, poorer donor base, competition from larger institutions that have poached talent, in addition to having longer histories, begun, largely in an age where, in many parts of the country, creating an African-American company would have been difficult, to say the least, programming that's considered "niche" and only of interest to your minority group are just a few. And yes, historic discrimination, under-education and a lack of exposure to the arts also all factor in, when you look beyond simply who goes to theatre and who doesn't. Theatre attendance doesn't happen in a vacuum.

The ultimate question is why. The answer is, for me, and for a lot of people, obvious: because it's important. Because we do love theatre and want it to reach as many people as possible. Because, ultimately, we believe passionately in the power of theatre to change the world for the better, if only more people were exposed to it. Because we do a disservice to our country, to the whole of the human race, by folding our arms and saying, "Well, those people over there, they're just not going to get it and they never will." What's the purpose in that? What's the endgame?

I'll be very, very curious to revisit this conversation next year, when prominent productions by three African-American women have been produced on Broadway (plays that very much fit the definition of "dialogue" theater). If the demographics are the same, well, maybe we do have something to discuss. If they've changed...will Tom change his tune? We shall see...

January 06, 2012

When I read Tom's essay, I knew it would be controversial, and allow a lot of people to thump their breasts in outrage. But it amazes me how easy it is for people to thump, and how hard it seems for them to do anything that might change the status quo for the better. Tom and I have been putting statistics out there year after year showing the problem, and everybody nods and then goes back to figuring out how to use Twitter better. Any suggestions that might lead to change is greeted with "concern" or dismissal, because change might "hurt" some people or institutions that people aspire to, or worse might impact our own career. But those statistics that Tom puts out there aren't made up. So we have two options: accept them as permanent reality, or do something that leads to change. And my experience is, for all the chest thumping, people lack the courage and desire to change anything.

There is a documentary called "The Essential Blue Eyed," which revisits the teacher who did the experiment with her elementary school students where blue eyes were embued with all the negative stereotypes usually applied to African-Americans. At one point in the documentary, she is addressing a gathering of teachers, and she says, "Stand up if you would like to change your white skin color for black." She waits -- nobody rises. She then says, "That means that you know what's happening, you know it's wrong. So why aren't you doing something?"

So yeah, the quotation asks you to do something. Something more than sighing and expressing your oh-so-enlightened sensibilities. So let's see it. Let's see a suggestion for change that actually is radical enough to address this imbalance. Let's see YOU suggest something, instead of simply picking the holes in the ideas of others.

There is an essay about race and privilege that defines "prejudice" as something that happens at the level of the individual, and "racism" as something that happens at the level of the system. It is possible to benefit from racism even if you aren't prejudiced. That's where we're at now: we have a theatrical system that is racist, elitist, and urbanist. The author says there are three categories: "active racism," "passive racism," and "active anti-racism." Active racism is exemplified by the KKK and others who actively do racist acts. Active anti-racism are people who seek to intervene and actively counter-act racism. And Passive racism are people who don't do anything racist, but they just go along. The analogy is to the moving sidewalks in airports: racists walk fast forward, anti-racists walk fast backwards, and passive racists stand still but are moved along by the escalator. The latter is what most theatre people are -- passive racists/elitists/urbanists. And until they get off the schneid, then Tom's analysis is spot-on.

So, Scott, you know I have a fair amount of respect for you and your work. But I'm calling bullshit on this. Absolute, obnoxious, pointless, self-aggrandizing bullshit.

What have I been doing? This. This. This. For the last two years, it's been my pleasure and honor to help build a theatre collective that is actively connecting black artists with a black audience that is dying for theatre. I have watched our audience and impact grow. I've seen, actually seen, with my own eyes, the impact we have had. That's what I've been doing. It's one of the reasons my posting here has been light. I haven't been talking about the changes I want to see. I've been making them. So before you get up on your high horse, open your eyes and see things beyond your narrow, narrow sphere. People are working, working rather hard to make our theatre stronger.

They exist. In droves. I've seen them. I've met them. They've asked me for more work, more plays, more great theatre. No, they're not going to Broadway, because Broadway is showing them nothing about their lives. That's what theatre is for, right? To hold a mirror up to nature. If it's not doing that, why not go?

What Tom did does not. It does nothing to make theatre in this country stronger, to move the ball forward. And it is not controversial, brave or insightful to say that theatre is the province of white people only. It's racist. Period. And if you can't see that, you, my dear friend, are one of those people on the escalator, blindly going through life without actually looking around.

If Tom had said, well, poor people don't really go to Broadway, therefore theatre's not for them and we should stop trying to create theatre for them, you'd be up on your high horse. But no, he just confirmed for you something you think is possible: that black people just don't get theatre. It's their fault. Not yours. So forget them. Leave them to their physical sports and their hip-hop, while we live the life of the true mind. Oh, we don't mean to say that they're not smart enough to understand and appreciate Shakespeare...but they're not.

The people I know, black, white, Latino, Korean, Chinese, Filipino, Jewish, mixed race, they're all working their asses off, trying to make better theatre, make stronger, smarter theatre. You know who's in the way? People who think like you and Tom. People who think that theatre is really only reserved for a certain chosen few, whether they're chosen by wealth, location, education or race. It's all the same prejudice. It's rank and that's what's killing our theatre.

The other reason I haven't been posting a lot is because I just plain got tired of having this fight. Tired of trying to explain that diversity is important to people who clearly don't actually give a crap about racism or equity or diversity. Tired of people like you and Tom and others, who stick your fingers in your ears and ignore any evidence that shakes your worldview. When people try to confront you about it, you accuse them of being careerist or urbanist or elitist and reject it. You're no better than climate change skeptics. The world is falling apart around you, but you don't want to actually do anything about it. Or rather, you just want to help people who look like you. Everyone else can burn.

If Tom had actually raised a question or started a conversation about modes of theatre, about cultural changes, or even about the effectiveness of marketing to people of color, then we could have a conversation. He didn't. And so we don't get to have a conversation. We're just yelling at each other. I didn't want to get angry about this, but, congrats, Scott, you made me angry. Hope you're happy. And before you even say that you weren't talking about me, you came here to say it. You posted it here. Not on Twitter. Not on your own blog. Maybe you're talking about someone else. But you were talking to me. Okay? So this is what you get back.

January 05, 2012

So. This hit my inbox this morning, both from a friend and in the always useful You've Cott Mail.

Oh, boy.

Well, as you can imagine, I have some things to say. I left a comment, as did a lot of other people. Lots of good thoughts there. Most of them focus on Tom's use of Broadway Stats. Obviously using an extremely small sample like Broadway to extrapolate not just to theatre in general, but to an entire race is very very very very very very very problematic. That alone basically undercuts his entire premise. But there are larger problems.

You know...ordinarily, I would have launched into this with my usual flame-y self and hurled the four-letter words with abandon. But, honestly, I'm pretty tired of that. This thing just makes me sad and kind of depressed. It makes me depressed that Tom wrote it. It makes me depressed that someone will read it and think, "Yeah, maybe we should ask that question." Or read this and think I'm saying we shouldn't question why so few people of color attend Broadway shows or what effect our marketing is having. I'm not. But then again, Tom isn't asking a question, he's making a statement.

He couches it as something that makes him feel queasy and uncomfortable, but it's got "a certain reality." Basically we all know it's true, but we don't want to say it. That's the part that makes me really sad. It's sad to think that white theatremakers think this is their bones. It's depressing and makes me wonder why I'm doing the work I do, bringing a community that loves theatre and wants to see more of it to theatres that are looking to build their audiences. It seems like a waste of time.

I know it's not. But that's what it feels like.

For the record, of course, black audiences and black theatres have had as long, as varied, as influential and important an impact as black artists. Let's just talk about the history of minstrelry, the Chitlin Circuit, the work of the Black Arts movement and the Negro Ensemble Company, just to name a few. Yes, the number of theatres is dwindling, but that's true all over. When a Shakespeare theatre closes, no one says, "Well, Shakespeare is just history." Even from the B'way stats that Tom notes, the majority of ticket buyers are women. Why not assume that men are just not interested in theatre and therefore no effort should be made to reach out to them? Tom doesn't make that leap. Of course not.

In the face of the facts of history, Tom simply asserts that our theatre is the result only of the influence of Europeans on our culture, ignoring the hodgepodge, one out of many nature of our country. All of that is wiped away. You can't make that argument without purposefully overlooking huge swaths of our history. It's almost like he started from his conclusion and didn't really even bother to make any arguments about it. It's simply evident that a low number of people of color in attendance can only mean a lack of interest. The plays produced mean nothing, the expense means nothing, nothing means anything except Tom's gut knowledge that black people are uninterested in theatre. So why even engage? I honestly don't know.

Tom, if you do want to engage and try to dig deeper, please do. I think you'll learn a lot.

In a similar vein, this has been making the rounds. As far as I'm concerned, it hits the nail on the head. It's sparked a lot of discussion and back-and-forth, which has been lovely, illuminating and complicated, good and bad. In the good column, there's this. When I think about all of this stuff, this part makes me feel better, because enlightenment is possible. I love this:

I’ve been thinking about this a lot and I think that white people (or some white people) don’t want to have to feel responsible or something. It has to do with guilt and with people thinking it is somehow easier to make yourself a victim than to take ownership over the huge problem of institutionalized racism in this country. People refuse to recognize their own privilege and deal with it. It makes me so angry and so sad. Because really the best way to deal with that kind of guilt is to fight against its cause and to work for social justice and social change.

Is anyone going to ask him about the underlying premise of his quote? Nope. Is anyone going to ask if it's a dog whistle, a pandering play on older white Americans fear of losing "their country?" Nope. Is anyone going to note that, while it's not literally a KKK slogan, it's essentially the same? Nope. The substance doesn't matter, not a bit. Hell, even the misunderstanding doesn't really matter. What matters is that Mitt Romney got mad that his vaguely racist stump rhetoric got called out and MSNBC decided that it was better to just apologize.

December 12, 2011

Seriously. Louis C.K. is pretty much just kicking ass and taking names right now. If you don't know who Louis is, well, you better learn. Right quick.

Today, he contributed to Reddit's series of question and answers threads called AMAs. And continued to be just freaking awesome. Louie's been a real hero of mine since I read this interview in the Onion's A.V. Club. I love Louie, but reading about how he got the show is a pretty inspiring thing:

So I didn’t really want to do it, because I really didn’t want to struggle. Also, he said he wanted me to use the same sort of material I was going to use for—I said I wanted to do a sketch show, and he said “No, we want you to do what you do onstage, which is talk about being a dad and stuff.” And I was like “Well, that’s got a high price tag on it over at NBC. They’re offering to pay me half a million bucks just to write the thing, let alone the cost to make it.” So he called me at home and talked to me for about three hours about his model for making television. And he said, “We just take a little bit of money and we throw it at somebody who is funny. We can do this without asking anybody, we can make this deal right now. You don’t have to pitch anything, and I’ll just write you a check, and we make a pilot.” And I said, “The only way this is interesting to me is if you literally wire me $250,000. I’m pitching you what the show is about. I don’t want to write a script for a pilot, and I don’t want to show you anything until it’s finished. So if you give me $250,000, I’ll give you a pilot in two months.”

Pretty damn awesome. Especially because the show he created is a singular, lovely, funny, painful thing. It's one of the best things happening on TV right now. and it's a product of Louie's singular vision.

And then there's this. The guy recorded his own comedy special. And he's selling it himself. You give Louie $5 and you get the special. No middle-man, no distributor. It's a pretty sweet deal. And he says if it makes money, he'll make a movie. He'll also buy a house. Because you're giving your money directly to the guy.

For the last couple of years, we've been talking about different models for artists, about the lack of control and security, about gatekeepers and moderators and blah blah blah. Maybe the models we're looking for are already out there. He's an artist who is controlling content and people are falling over themselves to give him cash. He's critically acclaimed, an Emmy nominee, and he's doing it without worrying about the gatekeepers. Part of the key is that, at every step of the way, he was ready to just walk away. That's key. If you need them more than they need you, you don't get to write your own ticket.

November 22, 2011

For various reasons, I have found myself surrounded by 20-somethings of late. I swear I'm not seeking out their company. They just keep popping up. Honest.

One way they've shown up in my life is through teaching. I've been teaching a section of Intro to Playwriting at NYU's Playwrights Horizons Theater School this fall. It's been a really fun and interesting experience. My teaching/mentoring experiences have generally either been with high schooler or with post-graduate semi-professional writers. It's been a while since I worked on the college level, so that took some adjusting. My particular group of kids have been...well, honestly? Great. They've been great. Smart, attentive, inquisitive, just the right amount of cheeky and disrespectful, diligent and unexpectedly passionate. I say "unexpectedly" not because they're young (they're mainly second-year students), even though they are, but most of them are not playwrights (at least not currently). They're young actors and, let's be frank, young actors tend to be pretty passionate about just one thing: being a young actor. These kids, though, have taken to the world of playwriting and the playwriting workshop with gusto. It's been pretty gratifying.

But now, I'm reaching a bit of a tender point: the post-mortem class. Our final session of the year, we're going to have a good old-fashioned "rap" session (Does anyone, anyone at all still call them "rap" sessions? Anyone?) and talk about the class, what they learned, how they experienced it, what I can improve on, etc. But I also want to talk to them about theatre, about the field they're heading into, the world they'll be heading into, what they can really expect. I want to talk to them about the absurdly high unemployment rate for artists in general and theatre artists in specific. The incredibly low chance of "material" success in the arts (however you want to define that) ahead of them. I've grown to think of the "If you love anything else, go do it" speech I'm pretty sure we all got at one point or another is a hoary cliche, but...I want to tell them something. I may not ever see any of these kids again and I want to give them something.

What would you say? What advice/counsel/words of warning or encouragement would you give a 19-year old theatre arts student who has just completed their first official playwriting course?

But let's not lose sight of this fact: brain fart aside, the idea that he's peddling is patently INSANE. And awful governing. On the merits, simply eliminating whole agencies for reasons that are completely unexplained or unexplored (thanks, CNBC, for the crackerjack moderating) is a bad, bad,bad idea. But, you know what? It's a fairly mainstream Republican idea right now. This is what passes for a solid policy idea from the right, pretty much the only one that doesn't involve making war or giving rich people more money.

Rick Perry's campaign is going to be over because he couldn't remember a part of a terrible, no-good idea that, if clearly stated, wouldn't have affected his campaign at all. Let that sink in.

October 24, 2011

You don’t have to be a truther or a birther to enjoy a conspiracy theory. We all, at one point or another, indulge fantasies that make the world seem more dangerous, more glamorous and, simultaneously, much more simple than it actually is. But then most of us grow up. Or put down the bong. Or read a book by somebody who is familiar with both proper historical methodology and the facts. The errors in “Anonymous,” I should point out, do not require great expertise to identify. Any undergraduate who has taken a course in Early Modern Drama, and paid attention, should be able to spot at least 10. (That might make a good exam, come to think of it.)

For the record, there's literally no way I would pay for tickets for this thing. Not because Oxfordians are dumb. Because it's a Roland Emmerich movie. And I've learned my lesson.